Not satisfied with the answers to your post the first time you posted it, so much you had to copy and paste it into a new thread here?

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/hi...license-3.html

 

Had a passenger, a school teacher, query me on "why do we even have pilots" as we talked while waiting for equipment to arrive.

Had a bleeds off take off to clear ships in the harbor, then a couple of rapidly changing clearances to get us around an arriving American 757 they did not have radar coverage on and some VFR traffic not talking to anyone. Flying back, across an ocean, solar storms were effecting HF. There was a lot of blow off which had light turbulence (doesn't paint on radar) and as we got closer to our destination more and more weather to work around. Mostly we were able to keep the seat belt sign off, but, we had to suspend cabin service once. The cabin temperature controllers were doing their usual game of getting cold when fed with a lot of bleed and warming up as the throttles came back. ATC wanted everything from 330 to 150 as they tried to sequence traffic into JFK for the VOR DME to 13L, changed to 22, back to 13L, can you take the right? ... instead of an 8 quartering headwind we had about a 19 knot quartering tailwind, but the tail wind component was within limits. Runway was a little wet. Glad we used autobrakes 3 to get stopping early & flaps 40 to slow for the RJ that threw out the brakes once he cleared the VOR (nothing wrong with that, esp with the slight tail wind). Then the taxi in was fouled up by a foreign carrier who had a difficult time getting their taxi worked out after a gate change.

Uneventful day at work for a professional airline crew, but a nearly impossible task for a drone operator. How does a drone operator have the situational awareness to work around weather that they've not flown in? How does the drone operator know that row 11 gets cold, or feel the relationship between temperature and bleed air output. When does the drone operator suspend cabin service, or know to drop flaps 40 and swing wide to give the guys ahead a bit more time and thus avoid a go around? What does the drone operator do when traffic in front of him suddenly swings back out of the ramp without calling ground because there is no gate available?

IMHO there are too many variables in the environment to make a drone operation successful, either from a safety standpoint or a passenger comfort standpoint.

 

First bolded-which airlines are freaking out?

Second bolded-Earth to management; FIX COMPENSATION!

Finally, if this publicity shines a light on the languishing state of our General Aviation community, that might be great. The skyrocketing cost of new build aircraft and 100LL? Sheesh. A little impetus to fix those things would benefit pilots of all levels.

 

There is a shortage of cheap experiance at the regional level, but I believe this may largly be corrected by many trends such as regional and mainline aircraft upguaging. The 50 seats are going to start disappearing exponentially. As a result, Pinnacle pilots are migrating to other airlines such as ExpressJet. But have ExpressJet or SkyWest lost any significant number of 50 seat aircraft yet?

Other regionals may also go out business such as Comair, but I think we'll see some cargo operators like Omni do so aswell. Increasing pilot compensation may excite pilot recruitment numbers, but it will also place more cost pressure on airline tickets. At some point higher pilot costs may cool travel demand.

But worst of all the economy is not recovering. This may solve the pilot shortage in the not to distant future. The floundering US economy with shrinking real GPD, endless money printing and fake unemployment numbers could further cool demand. If the US economy is shrinking than so to will the airline industry.

And heaven forbid we have another aviation related "terrorist" attack. Personally, I always worry about "terrorism" when we have a lack of US military engagement. So if Iraq and Afganistan are pulling down now than what's next? Supporting terrorists in Syria against Russian and China backed Assad just doesn't seem like enough to keep the US military industrial complex feed.

Someone mentioned automated reduced pilot compliment aircraft. This may be the future, but surely this is 20-30 years away. In the meantime, I think the economy will "save us" from a real shortage.

But no matter what, it is certain that hiring departments will be very busy hiring pilots... You see, majors have no shortage of relatively cheap labor!

 

USBLS says no pilot shortage. They get paid a lot to study such things, and they have no dog in the fight.

USBLS Pilots

 

What have you been smoking?? The economy is not recovering?

 

Automation is the way of the world and drones will happen and when they do the accident rate will probably decrease. This is not a knock against pilots but human beings are not perfect. Computers aren't either but they are significantly better. Computers are also improving at an exponential rate which will make drones the new reality and my guess within the next 30 years. If you are younger than 30 make sure you can do something other than pilot an aircraft.

 

Yeah, pilot pay at the RJ/Turbo prop level probably won't be spectacular, but pay could likely improve without greatly increasing ticket prices. Also, I prefer to say "compensation" vs "pay" because there are many things that are compensatory. There is no free lunch, but there are things airlines could do to attract pilots while minimizing cost.

Bottom line- the pendulum has swung far enough in terms of decreasing pilot compensation (and killing off GA). I am glad to see certain individuals and industry sectors feeling at least slightly uncomfortable about the pilot supply. Time to address some festering issues. Let's make things better for the next generation, and maybe ourselves.

 

Parking all of the 50 seat RJs should free up enough pilots to keep the shortage from getting too short.

Ten years from now, I don't think we will be flying any 50 seaters, and the regionals will probably have half as many planes and pilots (they will all be 70-90 seats) and that will keep the major airlines staffed just fine.

 

*sigh*
In..

In all seriousness, while there will most likely be good days of steady hiring ahead, the only shortages are gonna be ppl willing to work for 20k per year. Of course, the regionals will all scratch their heads wondering "why?!"